by Stella Noir
As we rounded the corner into the large, open, cavern I was shocked to see all of the bodies. We had brought upward of forty men with us and there were at least twice that many covering the floor. I searched the faces to see if I could find Grady, but none of them looked familiar. I couldn’t tell which ones were Syrnyk’s men and which ones were mine.
The girls in the closest cages all moved toward the bars and watched us as we were walked past them. It was horrifying seeing the state they were in. Some were skin and bones and had the pathetic, desperate look of people who were resigned to their fate. While others had hope in their eyes and called to us like we might help them. I figured those were the newer girls.
We were pushed down one of the long caverns that was lined with dozens of cells on either side. Some cells held groups of emaciated and filthy girls that were huddled together in a corner. None of them had any clothing on and they all had that sunken look on their faces like they had no teeth. The atmosphere in the caverns was cold and damp and I didn’t see how they had survived down here. Even when Lucas and I kept the girls in Italy at the villa, we gave them blankets to stay warm. These girls had nothing. Just piles of hay to sleep on.
Syrnyk unlocked the barred door to the first empty cell we came to and pulled it open.
“Everything off. Now,” he said as he pointed the gun at me.
I stared at him incredulously, unable to comprehend what was happening. And I suddenly saw the sick irony of it all. I was being paid back for every life I had ruined. I was going to experience everything they had experienced. Everything Lucas and I had done to those girls in the caverns of the villa would be done to us. I looked over at Lucas and I could see the fear in his eyes.
“Perhaps you would prefer that the little girl is naked first,” Syrnyk said as he pulled Lucas’s jacket off of Brooklyn with one hard tug. She screamed and attempted to cover herself up, but Syrnyk grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled her over to him.
“Silence! Remove your clothes. I will not tell you again.”
I watched in horror as Syrnyk reached around and found Brooklyn’s nipple with his fingers. He still had the gun on me, and was watching me with his cold, gray eyes, but he was touching her.
As I started to unbutton my shirt, something over Syrnyk’s shoulder caught my eye. It looked like the reflection off of something shiny, and I couldn’t think of what any of the girls in the cages would have that would reflect any light like that.
I quickly realized that someone was moving in the main cavern area and the thing that was throwing a reflection in the dim light was a gun. I glanced next to me at Lucas, but I wasn’t sure if he knew there was someone down here with us. I wanted to signal him in some way, but I couldn’t without letting Syrnyk know.
It was Grady. I saw him for a split second as he moved closer, hiding behind the dead bodies that were littered across the floor. The girls in the cages started moaning and begging for help again, and I hoped that the little bit of noise they made would work as some sort of distraction. I pulled my shirt off of my shoulders and down my arms, then I made a gesture like I was going to throw it onto the ground, but instead I threw it into Syrnyk’s face.
“Brooklyn get down!” I yelled as I kicked the gun out of Syrnyk’s hand and flew at him, my fingers sinking into the place where his eyes were located behind the white shirt that covered his face.
Immediately shots were fired and the sounds of the girls in the cells around us grew to a fever pitch. I had no idea where anyone was. All I could see was a tunnel of red and black swirling around me and in the center was Syrnyk’s ugly face.
I landed right on top of him as he fell backward onto the ground, and when the shirt fell away I saw that I had punctured one of his eyes with my thumb. Blood pooled in the socket and streamed down his face as he tried to grab me. But I didn’t give him a chance.
My fists came down on his face until there were no human features left. I kept bringing my fists down on him with full force even when I heard his skull crack and saw his jaw fall into his face. I kept punching him even though my knuckles were bloody and raw, and I would have kept going if I hadn’t been pulled back.
It took me a moment to realize that he was dead and that the gunfire around me had stopped. I turned and looked behind me and Grady grabbed my bloody hands and helped me up.
As soon as I was up I saw Brooklyn. She had found Lucas’s jacket and had it wrapped around her like a robe. She ran to me and wrapped her arms around me, her little body heaving with sobs as she clung to me and said my name over and over.
“Adrian, you did it. You killed him.”
“Oh, God, I’m so glad you’re okay, Brooklyn.” I closed my eyes and felt Brooklyn’s body in mine. For a moment I couldn’t believe it was real. I kept thinking something else was going to happen that would pull her out of my arms. I held her so tightly I don’t know how she could breathe. But she didn’t loosen her grip on me until I pulled her head back and touched my lips to hers. I could taste the salt of her tears on her quivering lips.
When I looked down at her again I noticed the metal cuff was still around her neck. “We need to get this thing off of you.”
“That man has the key. He put it on me just before you got here.”
As Brooklyn bent down to go through Syrnyk’s pockets I looked around and saw Lucas on the ground a few feet away. A pool of blood was forming around his left side. He had been shot in the chest just below his shoulder and blood was pouring out of the wound. Grady and Alek were huddled around him, checking for his pulse.
“Lucas! Lucas!” I yelled as I reached him and held his face in my hands. “Oh God, Lucas, you can’t die!”
I looked up and saw one man standing near us. That was all that was left. One of our men had survived along with Alek and Grady, and it was the three of them that had brought Syrnyk’s man down.
“Can we get a helicopter here? We need to get him to the hospital! My brother is going to die if we don’t do something now!”
Alek nodded and pulled out his phone. “We must take him up.”
The four of us picked up Lucas’s body and carried him to the elevator, and all the while the girls in the cells screamed for us to let them out. I heard Brooklyn tell them over and over as we made our way to the elevator that we would be back to get them out, but that didn’t calm them down. And I couldn’t blame them.
When we were on the main floor of the house, Alek got on his phone and spoke to someone in Russian while we found our way back to the room Syrnyk had held us in. After we laid him down Grady went to find the main entrance to the house so that we could have Lucas ready to go when the helicopter arrived.
“The helicopter will be here any minute. There is a hospital in Vologda, not far at all. And the police will be here soon too. I told him whose house this is and they are very anxious to talk to all of us.”
“I’m going to the hospital with my brother and Brooklyn is coming with me. They can question us later if they have to, but I’m going with him.”
“I’m sure that will be fine. I can tell them a lot. Can you stay, Grady? It will be helpful for me to have someone who knows the history of your situation.”
“Sure. I’ll be more than happy to tell them everything I know. I’ll meet up with you at the hospital,” Grady said as he put his hand on my shoulder.
“Thank you, Grady. I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re still here with us.”
I got up and gave him a hug as the sound of the helicopter approached the property. The four of us picked Lucas up and ran him out onto an enormous lawn just as some paramedics set a gurney down. They got him strapped in and loaded onto the helicopter, then helped Brooklyn climb aboard next. Before I climbed in I looked back at Grady.
“I’ll see you soon.”
“You will. I’ll get to the hospital as soon as I can. And don’t worry, your brother is going to be fine.”
“I really hope so, Grady.”
As the helicopte
r took off and flew over the thick forest that surrounded Syrnyk’s secluded property, I was finally able to accept what had happened. We had done it. Lucas and I had killed Syrnyk and his men and my father.
Everyone who had been after Brooklyn was dead and I was taking her away from that place. Brooklyn was finally safe in my arms. I just hoped to God that Lucas was going to make it too.
BROOKLYN
“What’s going to happen to all of the girls that were down there? The police are going to help them, aren’t they?”
“Yes, they will,” Adrian said as he put his arms around me. “I can’t believe how many he had down there.”
“I know, Adrian. It was horrible.”
I climbed into Adrian’s lap and curled up in his arms. He was still covered in blood and didn’t want to get it all over me, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to be in his arms. I wanted to feel his body pressed up against mine, his arms surrounding me and keeping me safe from the whole world. I kissed his lips, then nestled my head in the crook of his neck and kept it there.
“And Grady is going to be okay?”
“Yeah, he’ll be fine. He always knows what to do.”
“So do you, Adrian. You found me. If it hadn’t been for you, no one would have come for me. No one would have cared. You saved me, Adrian.”
I could see tears forming in his eyes as he looked down at me.
“I would’ve died before I let him have you.”
I reached my hand up and touched his cheek and let a small trickle of tears cover my fingers as I wiped it away.
“I love you so much, Adrian. I don’t ever want to be away from you again.”
“You never will be if I can help it,” I said, leaning down and touching his lips to mine.
We’d had passionate kisses before, and early morning kisses that were slow and lazy. And there had been many kisses that were comfortable and familiar and loving. This kiss felt like it was coming from an entirely different place than any kiss we had ever had. It blended us together into a space where there was only the two of us. It consumed my senses and blocked everything else out, every sound and every thought of anything but Adrian and me. Not with passion or lust, but with the knowledge that we were one and always would be.
Immediately after we landed on the roof of the hospital, the EMTs pulled Lucas out and rushed him down to surgery. They wrapped me in a blanket and put me in a wheelchair, then made Adrian put a blanket around himself as well. He didn’t want one, but he didn’t have a shirt on. It was cold on the roof and the EMTs insisted that he stay warm while we were taken down to the emergency room.
I didn’t want to be examined, but the doctors in the hospital insisted. Adrian wouldn’t allow them to take me anywhere without him even for a second, and insisted that we be taken to the same exam room.
I sat next to him in the wheelchair while he went through a variety of tests, then when it was my turn I got up on the exam table and he sat next to me in the wheelchair.
Because I was pretty cut up and a little bit dehydrated and Adrian had some minor injuries, they decided to keep us overnight. We were able to find an English-speaking doctor to make sure that we were put in our own private room, and within an hour we were side by side in two hospital beds.
Even though I was hooked up to an IV, as soon as we were alone, I hopped down off of my bed and wheeled my IV stand over to Adrian’s bed. We squeezed into one of the teeny hospital beds together.
I couldn’t imagine anything better than the way it felt to be in Adrian’s arms in that bed. I was exhausted and still in shock over everything that had happened over the last week. But the sound of Adrian’s breath, the feel of his arms around me, and the smell of his skin all formed a cocoon around me and I drifted off into a more peaceful sleep than I had ever experienced in my life.
As I drifted I didn’t think about any of the horrible things that happened. I didn’t think about my father or that Russian man or all of those girls in the cavern. I just thought about Adrian and me and how we were truly free now. We were going to be able to live our lives like regular people, without being chased and shot at, and without constantly fearing for our lives.
I woke the next morning to a gruff Russian voice. I panicked for a moment, thinking I was still back with that Syrnyk man. When I opened my eyes I realized I was still in the hospital room and a nurse was standing over me, gesturing for me to go back into my own bed.
“I guess we’ve been found out,” I said as I turned my head and kissed Adrian’s lips.
“Yeah, it sounds like she means business. Better get back over there.”
Adrian smiled as he helped me sit up, then gave my bare butt a little squeeze through the back of the hospital gown as I hopped off the bed. I giggled a little as I crossed the room under the scowling eyes of the nurse and got into the other hospital bed.
The nurse grumbled in Russian under her breath as she covered me up and checked my IV, then turned to leave. Just then our doctor walked in and the nurse had some stern words with him as she pointed at our beds, then stormed out of the room.
“Your nurse tells me you didn’t sleep in your own bed last night.”
“Yes, we slept together in that bed, but we both survived.”
The doctor laughed and checked through the chart in his hands. “We’ll be releasing both of you today so you won’t have to worry about any of that.”
“How’s my brother? Lucas Bellini. He was brought in with us last night,” Adrian asked.
“Yes, I have your brother’s chart right here. He made it through the surgery just fine and he’s in recovery right now. He should be okay to leave in a few days.”
“Really? You’re going to release him so soon?”
“Yes, the bullet went straight through the muscle below his shoulder and didn’t hit any vital organs,” he said as he flipped through the pages of the chart. “No major damage. He was sewed up and given a round of antibiotics. He’ll need to take it easy for at least a week after he leaves the hospital. And he’ll probably have a hard time using his left arm for a while until the muscle that was damaged heals. But he’ll be fine.”
“Thank you so much, doctor. I’d like to see him.”
“You’re both going to be released as soon as the paperwork goes through, and after that you can go up to recovery and see him. I believe he’s awake, but he’ll be groggy for the rest of the day most likely.”
The nurse came back into the room and said something in Russian to the doctor.
“A Mr. Grady Arbuckle would like to come in and see both of you. Would you like him to come in?”
“Yes, he can definitely come in.”
Grady walked in the room with two large shopping bags just as the doctor left.
“It’s so good to see both of you.”
“Grady! I’m so glad you’re here!” He came over to my bed and gave me a kiss on the cheek, then went over to Adrian and shook his hand, holding it in both of his for a long moment.
“I can’t tell you how glad I am that we all made it out of there. It got pretty hairy there for a while.”
“Yeah, what happened? We had like forty guys with us down there.”
“Well, after you went up in the elevator he must have sent some more guys down. There must have been a camera in the elevator, or an alarm.”
“He had to have known we were there even before that. He knew that Lucas had killed our father out in the woods. He must have had someone out there that our guys missed. And once we were in the tunnel they ran back and told him we were there.”
“Either way I was lucky enough to have grabbed a set of keys off of one of the guards. Alek and I were checking out one of the caverns and as soon as we heard gunshots being fired, we slipped into one of the unoccupied cells. That place was insane. It just went on forever and ever. I don’t know when those cells were built, but they looked really old. Like they had been there for a hundred years. From what I could tell he only had girls in half of the cells d
own there.”
“Yeah, but that still had to be what, at least thirty, maybe even fifty girls down there.”
“Yeah, it was unbelievable. The cavern we walked down … it just went on and on. At one point they might have had hundreds of people down there. Maybe during one of the wars.”
“So what happened after we left? What happened to the girls?” I asked.
“Well, Alek and I waited for the police, and apparently they’ve been wanting to catch this guy for a long time. He was involved in all kinds of nasty stuff. Weapons trafficking, drugs, you name it. But the worst was the human trafficking.
“Apparently he was one of the most notorious suppliers in Europe. They suspected he was involved in a lot more, but he kept his location secret and they were never able to implicate him in anything.
“The Russian police didn’t even know that he owned that house. Apparently they’d been looking for him for the last ten years in the Ukraine. They had no idea he was in Russia. And they had no idea about the underground caverns and the whole trafficking ring he had going at that location. They questioned me for quite a while, and I know they’re going to want to come and question you two. The doctors have kept them away, but they’re out in the hall waiting.”
“What about Alek? Was he arrested?” Adrian asked.
“They took him down to the station, but it didn’t sound like they were going to arrest him. At least I hope not. He really helped us out a lot. And he’s totally cooperating with the police. He has a lot of information that they want, and other than him there’s no one else left. No one worked directly with Syrnyk on his property or in the caverns, anyway. So how’s Lucas? Have you seen him? Did he pull through okay?”
“Yeah, the doctor said he’s going to be fine. I haven’t seen him yet, but we’re going to be released in a little while and I’ll go see him then. I’m planning on sticking around until he gets released from the hospital. So we’re going to need to get a hotel room nearby.”